All the way from Missouri. Arrived today. Bought sight unseen on Ebay. Woot! It’s the real deal. No disappointments. :D
I’ll have to record some audio for everyone. The Pantera sounds insane now. Sooooo loud, but it’s deep, throaty. The old mufflers were blown out and a little raspy. The old ones were put in place while the car had rear bumpers, and now that it doesn’t, the exhaust seemed like it should be shortened.
These are 12″ Cherry Bombs with stainless tips. Had to cut off the old ones, and weld on the new ones, then paint the new mufflers in high-temp black. Blued the stainless tips with a torch.
Decided to add a full roll cage to the Scout. We’ll be taking it off-road and I don’t want to worry about our heads. :) The cage also serves as a mounting point for new seats and modern three point seat belts. Spent a good part of this weekend on it, and don’t have much to show yet. The pile of metal tubing in the living room is from http://extremecustomparts.com. It’s in more pieces than I expected! Started welding in reinforcement plates to help spread the load where the cage will bolt in. Got four out of six done.
Quiet day today so I got the old Pantera out and stretched its legs. :)
The original steel wheels wouldn’t clear the disc brakes so I picked up a new set from ScoutParts.com. These fit and I was able to use the same tires so it wasn’t too costly. Looks nice and will do for now!
I read an original driving review of the Scout and it sounded like they didn’t stop very well when they were new. Here we are, 43 years later, and I’m here to tell you that they were, in fact, scary! So over the last few weekends I’ve been working on installing front disc brakes.
You can find brake conversions for Dana 30 axles, but no complete kits for a Scout. You need add a brake booster, and there isn’t really room for one because of the inner fender. In addition, you need a new Master Cylinder and Proportioning Valve specific for the front disc/rear drum combo. I took some measurements and ordered this combo from Summit Racing. Cut out a small section of the inner fender and welded in new metal, and had to make my own mounting bracket for the brake booster (both circled in red). Also had to fab up a brake pedal push rod for the new set up. Test drove it today and it stops nicely, but the pedal feels a little spongy so I’m going to bleed the brakes again.
I also installed new locking hubs while I was there and it’s a good thing. The old ones were shot.
Gotta be able to park the Scout in the garage so that we can work on it. The first time we pulled it into the garage we noticed it smelled heavily of fuel. Found that the fuel filler tubes were old and cracked. Bought some new ones from Scout Parts along with new style caps.
Jaime and I took the Pantera up to PI Motorsports for their 2011 Holiday party on Sunday. We try to go to this show every year. It’s a great chance to see a lot of other cool Panteras and meet/greet new people.
In 2004 we won the “Best Work in Progress” trophy. Our pantera had a gutted interior and none of the fancy body work or engine work had been done. This year we snagged the “Best of Show” trophy, which is a huge compliment considering all of the great looking Panteras there. This is the biggest award we’ve ever received at a car show, and we’ve been to a lot of them!
